


Phantasmal

by oceansinmychest



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Art Admiration, Character Study, Inspired by Poetry, Museums, One Shot, Post-Canon, Purple Prose, post-S3, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 17:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19339387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Having escaped the Devil's clutches, Bedelia finds herself in a nomadic existence, drifting from place to place. She makes a stop in Victoria, captivated by Australia's beauty, yearning (aching) to lose what's left of herself.





	Phantasmal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScarletteStar1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/gifts).



> This fic is just an exploration of Bedelia's character post-canon. What if she does survive? Where would she go and how would she live? These are things I ask myself daily.
> 
> Anywho, this is a birthday gift to the lovely Scarlette! I haven't forgotten that Bedelia & Alana fic I promised to you eons ago. Much hugs & Stoli, sweetie, Eddie darling xxxx. Your fics give me life, my friend! Happy Early Birthday. :)

> _National Gallery of Victoria_  
>  Melbourne, Australia

Close to the Yarra River, one hell of a museum sits. A reflective body of water welcomes tourists to sit on its ledge. The fountain comes alive, spewing jets up towards the heavens. White cube galleries serve as a cage for another beast. Far from incognito beneath a wide-brimmed sun hat, a stranger, a nobody, passes through the arch and waltzes through the entrance.

On this afternoon, the spectator plays the role of pretty, petty voyeur. She pretends to be another Carmen Sandiego, but alas, she’s somewhere off in the world - forgotten and archaic, a relic left in the FBI’s dusty, mold-ridden manila files.

Australia welcomes Bedelia Du Maurier with open arms. November’s sun scorches the nape of her neck. Melbourne’s weather is less kind than a summer in Baltimore. She’s pale and frail. This kind of heat burns you alive.

In a sheath black dress (mourning attire to most, life anew to her), a paper-thin woman melts into her surroundings. A bracelet - silver chain - dangles from her skeletal wrist. Her body is poetry: the kind with slanted lines and unfinished thoughts that leaves an odd taste in your mouth. 

The waterfall entrance yields an illusory effect, rivulets streaming down glass, hypnotizing after staring for five seconds too long; it turns passerby to stone, echoing Medusa. Postmodern pillars remind her of Quantico, as sturdy as Jack Crawford, but here, life pulls Bedelia along by her tangled marionette strings. She approaches the front desk and pays for the special exhibitions to fund the arts though she might not have the chance to appreciate them all. Hollow bodies are always in search of something to fill that crushing void.

With receipt and ticket in hand, she walks away. Tucks them into her bottomless satchel. In the Great Hall, the stained glass captivates her as well as the general audience. The plush, red carpet acts as the killing ground. Sunlight sprawls across the hallowed ground, coating the cushions that welcome a body or two. Here, she could lounge for hours, but neither gluttony nor sloth have a chance with her today. Silently, with her head bowed, she proceeds. The stairs and escalators threaten to give her a case of vertigo.

On level one, in the tearoom, she spikes her piping hot cuppa. Brandy mixes in well enough. The tea takes on an amber hue and burns on the way down. She feels better, medicated, null and void. A bottle-dyed blonde sips her tea and savors the sting. She tucks the flask back into her crimson purse, dangling by a silver chain. The waiter pretends to care. Before her practice, she used to be like him. She appreciates the humanity behind the act, feigned or otherwise. 

Escapism is a spectator’s sport. The chase leaves her thinner, gaunter, worn away and famished. Redemption is folly, it’s not forgiveness she seeks. From place to place, Bedelia has drifted; nothing satiates her famished spirit. At this point, she has masqueraded as a handful of people. There is no tan line to mark her marriage to Dr. Roman Fell. Oh, how she relishes her solitude, wedded to loneliness. That false face never belonged to her.

Detached, she feels separated from her body. Dancing with the Devil temporarily filled the hole, but it was artificial. Synthetic. She feigns plastic placidity. It’s too arduous of a task to become nothing: to sink and melt into yourself. Her rigid, bony shoulders slump down, consumed by an angular suit jacket.

The waiter returns to refill the ceramic mug. She thanks him with a grim smile. Etiquette be damned, her elbow rests on the table. Her pale, blue veins interrupt her skin. In solitude, her wrist trembles. Porcelain clinks together. A few tables away, an elderly couple have the audacity to glare at her. She carries on with her mannequin ruse. The disguise becomes more than a costume; it’s her flesh.

If only she glanced at the menu a tad longer. She could have ordered wine with a light lunch. At least her brandy was free. Paying what’s due, she quietly exits. Once more, Bedelia passes through, a stranger in the crowd. The phantom pain where her leg once was serves as an unkind friend, an old assailant, that causes her to shift. To move to ease that tingling ache. The pins and needles sensation comes and goes, ebbs and flows.

Sleep seldom provides escape from the waking dream. She searches her soul for any residual prophecy, all too aware that she hasn’t a pretty penny to give to faith. The wanting has turned into a want to disappear: a need to crawl deep inside herself. A hand in the mouth past the tongue, the throat, and into something deeper (and far more sinister). Her stomach rumbles.

Distant, fleeting fancies flutter about within her mind. Memory of what was skips a beat, beat, beat (like the heart: unholy, untrue). Lord Discord holds a sway over them all. In Italy, she recalls how her hands linked with Hannibal’s, allowing herself to feign a marriage – to feign a life that didn’t belong to her. She will never turn herself in, she thinks. No, never. Hannibal’s barbed wire manipulations ensnare whatever remains of Bedelia.

Portraits, paintings, photography, and sculptures become a drug-addled blur. So, she took a pill or two before her entry. It doesn’t matter. For the sake of her current state, she avoids the contemporary wing. Without the guidance of a map, she loses herself to a compilation of eclectic galleries that a curator deemed appropriate.

Every frame, gilded gold, captures a moment, either artificial or real (even a combination of the two). Frames holding paintings are just another cage. Christ, her head spins. Her body’s an empire of deceit, decaying flesh, and cracking bones. She taps her temple to steady herself.

Despite her aversion, she still finds herself in the contemporary wing anyway. A Fred Williams piece stares back at her. _Red Landscape_ glares with all its untapped potential. She thinks of blood, not Mother Earth, when she gawks in a most uncouth manner.

When you’re lonely, you’re more inclined to be trapped inside your head. Stagnant as a result of ending her career, her decision reflects a still-life painting or maybe she’s just a portrait begging to be refined. Confined. Sold. Displayed.

All that’s left to her character is the bones; the meat’s gone, chewed up and swallowed, a bit of leg digested in two bellies, not one. The Hippocratic Oath feels betrayed by her absent spirit. Inflicting harm is tangible, and a far tastier outcome. Curiosity misses the taste. She runs her tongue along her pearly whites.

The bits resembling branches echo the tears in her very being. Exasperated, she turns her head away. A student nearby, all in black with glasses and a pathetic excuse for a beard, sketches whatever captivates him.

How exhausting it is - to never fit these flimsy, papier-mâché masks, to flit about every masquerade, every occasion, as a falsified thing. Bedelia often feels faceless, nameless, but never blameless.

“Do I know you?” A stranger intrudes, the accent belonging to a New England dialect. She registers his face as a shadowy mask, a husband and child scampering a few yards away.

As a deer in the headlights, she flashes a frozen smile that highlights her laughter lines, though strained they may be. Already, she thinks about her next drink. 

“No,” she says. “The mind plays tricks. We’ve never crossed paths before. Would you excuse me?”

Mystified, he allows this. With a solemn nod, she makes her grand exit - down the escalator to avoid a tragic misstep. Her heels sound thunderous though maybe, just maybe, that's the blood rushing inside her skull. There is no thrill in being caught, only paranoid delusions that cause her to seek sanctuary elsewhere. Bedelia doesn't even bother to spare a glance over upon exiting the NGV.

Once more wedded to the roads full of busy pedestrians, she considers returning to America and losing herself to New York’s hectic streets. Anywhere to become a ghost.


End file.
